Daily viva help for PhDs
You had lots of time to think during your PhD. You had plenty during your prep. You have enough in the viva.
Your examiners want you to consider, ponder, debate, reflect, examine, muse, propose – to think! – and then respond.
This doesn’t mean long silences, longer vivas or almost-impossible questions. Just enough time to think about something important.
Take time in your viva. It’s there for you to use.
Are you prepared to say “I don’t know” in your viva?
There’s only so much information, knowledge and talent you can build up before your viva. You’ll have enough, but you might not have everything. Perfection isn’t required: but do you feel comfortable enough saying “I don’t know” so that you aren’t worried if you do need to say it?
To help build that comfort, and the confidence that goes with it:
I don’t know what you might have to say “I don’t know” to. You can’t know that in advance either. But you can know that it is OK.
These three simple words don’t have to define you, your viva performance or how you feel going into the viva.
A question in the viva cannot prompt you to talk in minute detail about the sum of three or more years of work. Every response for every question that you are asked will take up a few hours at most.
A response could be short because that’s what it needs to be. It could leave details out because they aren’t as important as what you keep in. It could be incomplete because the complete details would take too long, or you don’t have them, or for some other reason.
A response may or may not be an answer to the question. It may or may not move the conversation in the direction you or your examiners want. It may be that you have to stop before you really want to, or just give an indication of what you mean, rather than the full picture.
Remember: you can always pause and think, and your examiners can always ask for more if they need it.
Early last year, I was sharing my Viva Survivor session to a dozen people in large room. It was a cold day outside but a warm room thanks to the heating. The session got off to a good start after introductions and sharing the outline, and I was moving on to the first topic.
I’d not been talking for long, when a tremendous noise started up from the windows at the far side of the room. Really loud, regular banging, like construction workers fixing scaffolding. After a minute we all realised it couldn’t be that, it was going on for too long. So we looked around outside for the cause of this terrible banging but couldn’t see anything. With nothing in sight and nothing to do we just tried to ignore it.
I presented for another hour before our break. The noise was still going. My voice was hoarse and all our ears were aching.
So I went to check and couldn’t see anything again. And it was only then that I realised that the noise sounded like it was coming from outside…
…but was actually coming from near the windows. From the radiator. A regular banging noise was vibrating outwards from the radiator, shaking the metal window frames.
And was silenced by turning a valve on the base of the radiator’s pipework. The room laughed and cheered! Then we all groaned as we saw how simple the solution had been; we could only have resolved it when we knew the real problem.
Keep this in mind for your viva: if your examiners have a criticism, or think there is a problem, make sure you know what it is before you start to respond. Ask questions to get more information or to find out their reasons. Sometimes you might know what to do. But other times you might need a little more to then simply turn the valve off at the base of their concerns.
The viva isn’t a one-way Q&A. Engage with your examiners to respond to all of their questions as well as you can.